Standing to Sue. Michael and Karla Covington live in Jefferson County, Idaho. When they bought their home, a gravel pit was across the street. In 1995, the county converted the pit to a landfill. Under the county's operation, the landfill accepted major

Question

appliances, household garbage, spilled grain, grass clippings, straw, manure, animal carcasses, containers with hazardous content warnings, leaking car batteries, and waste oil, among other things. The deposits were often left uncovered, attracting insects and other scavengers and contaminating the groundwater. Fires broke out, including at least one started by an intruder who entered the property through an unlocked gate. The Covingtons complained to the state, which inspected the landfill, but no changes were made to address their concerns. Finally, the Covingtons filed a suit in a federal district court against the county and the state, charging violations of federal environmental laws. Those laws were designed to minimize the risks of injuries from fires, scavengers, groundwater contamination, and other pollution dangers. Did the Covingtons have standing to sue? What principles apply? Explain.

Answer 1

Standing to sue
This problem concerns standing to sue. As you read in the chapter, to have standing to sue, a party must have a legally protected, tangible interest at stake. The party must show that he or she has been injured, or is likely to be injured, by the actions of the party that he or she seeks to sue. In this case, the issue is whether the Covingtons had been injured, or were likely to be injured, by the county's landfill operations. Clearly, one could argue that the injuries that the Covingtons complained of directly resulted from the county's violations of environmental laws while operating the landfill. The Covingtons lived directly across from the landfill, and they were experiencing the specific types of harms (fires, scavenger problems, groundwater contamination) that those laws were enacted to address. Indeed, this was the conclusion reached by the appellate court in this case. While the trial court found that the Covingtons lacked standing to sue, when the plaintiffs appealed to U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, that court found that the Covingtons did have standing to assert their claims. The appellate court remanded (sent back) the case to the lower court for a trial.